w520/optimus 1000m problems w/ battery

What is the problem?

 

...wow something weird really happened when I went to create a new thread

it double posted the thread and didnt include my OP post in either
anyway, this was what was supposed to be in my OP:

so, i just bough diablo 3 and it runs like a charm on my w520 with settings up to the max, as long as it is plugged in

unplug it, and it turns to a laggy unplayable mess

i tried everything, launched power management and made sure the settings were identical for battery/ac power

i even went into the nvidia control panel and forced it to only use the 1000m for diablo 3, but i still have the same problems when running on the batter

any advice???

 

Use AC.

It seems Lenovo Optimus based machines were designed to use a web browser or email client on battery, and that is about it.

There are many threads about CPU throttling on battery. In your scenario, you also need to force the use of the discrete GPU. Removing both limits isn't going to be easy.

 

why isnt there a way to select 1 or the other?

that kind of defeats the purpose of it being a laptop

 

Run the game on integrated graphics.

 

Pressident K, please fill me in on your system's performance. I have the same laptop with the same GPU and I'm getting nothing but crashing and overheating issues with the game. The laptop is barely two months old. The game ran flawless the first time I played it on max settings, now I'm lucky if I can get five minutes out of it on minimal. It is plugged in. Im beginning to suspect a defect in the cooling.

 

Are you running on AC, BIOS Display setting on Discrete, and the fan set to Turbo Boost+ ???

The Turbo Boost+ setting puts the thermal system on maximum cooling. AC power supports full performance. And setting to Discrete insures you are using the most powerful GPU at all times.

If it doesn't work on those settings, it doesn't work.

 

the game runs flawlessly while on AC, on battery it loads up and runs but it lags a bit. no crashes, no overheating. The fans kick in a bit, but its nothing crazy

My GF just bought a u400 yesterday, same issue. lags on battery, runs fine on AC.

I haven't tried changing the setting in the bios.

I wish that useless wifi toggle was a gpu toggle instead. Would of made things much easier than having to boot into bios which is a total pain, i only get in 1/10 boots

 

Get ThrottleStop from Downloads | Tech|Inferno and manually force full CPU power on battery.

It's unlikely you'll be playing for more than 1.5 hours though, so don't go far from the power outlet

 

I am running turbo boost on the system fan with descrete graphics enabled exclusively from the BIOS. With the huge fan of my cooler master stand running underneath. Damn. What are your gameplay settings in D3? This laptop might be on its way back to Lenovo for a replacement.

 

As a side note, I too experienced a ton of lag before plugging my laptop into AC the first time I played. It's due to the hardware throttling the CPU to save battery power, even at max performance power profiles.

 

Known limitation of the W520. As indicated, throttlestop appears to be the only workaround.

 

throttlestop seems intimidating at first glance
can u point me to a good tutorial ?

does the W520 use clock modulation or chipset modulation?

 

Unknown. I haven't actually researched it thoroughly nor have I tried it. I am a firm believer the portable workstation series wasn't designed to do workstation tasks while being transported, only after it arrives at a destination with AC power.

Between AC power and hard core tasks, you get decent battery power and enough CPU/GPU to check email, surf the web, and a few other chores. The W520 is much better than the W510 in this regard, but the W510 is more reliable.

Those scenarios suit me well, but there are a lot of other customers that have different scenarios. Many of those scenarios include high performance modeling, computing, gaming and other tasks while on a train or in the classroom where AC power is not available or convenient.

I feel for those customers. But clearly the W520 wasn't designed for that. It will be interesting to see if a year of feedback changed this for the W530.

 

i dont understand why there is a difference between running on AC and battery

so what if you do intensive stuff while on battery, then it just dies faster

idk why its limited

 

I do not recommend using ThrottleStop to disable a manufacturers throttling scheme while running on battery power. A manufacturer that uses throttling while on battery power is doing this for a reason. Maybe their only reason is to increase run time while on battery power but they might also be doing this to prevent the battery from being damaged. Drawing too much power from a battery too quickly can permanently damage it. The sad reality is that some high performance laptops consume more power than a battery is capable of delivering so manufacturers either slow down the CPU or the GPU or both to prevent the battery from going up in smoke.

It's a lot simpler than it looks. Start ThrottleStop. If you don't know what type of Clock Modulation throttling that your laptop uses then put a check mark in both the Clock Modulation box and another one in the Chipset Clock Mod box and make sure both of those are set to 100%.

Check the Set multiplier box and set that as high as it can go which is usually Turbo for Core i5 and Core i7 processors. Check off EIST and click on the Turn On button and you are done. Minimize ThrottleStop to the System Tray and that's it.

If your battery craps out in a few months, re-read the first sentence in this post.

 

doe any battery exist than can handle a higher output and is compatible with the w520?

 

I'm using W520 with ThrottleStop for a year (Lenovo's power manager does not work too well on Windows 2008 Server), and the battery after 150 cycles is at 85Wh out of the initial 94 or so.

So there are no major problems with what, except shortened battery life. W520 supports a slice battery too, that together with the 9 cell should get you to 4-5 hours of full power disconnected.

 

I'm fairly certain it's a hardware defect. I restored the laptop to factory settings to see of it might have been an issue with someting wrong with the power Mannagement or drivers. Follwing a factory restore, anytime I use Descrete graphics I experience a quick system crash.

 

You might die faster too if you draw too much current from the battery and it explodes.

On a more serious note, batteries (or any power source) can only supply so much power (power means the time derivative of energy here). Therefore, there is a limit to how much the battery can provide (95 ~ 105 W, somewhere between there), and the W520 can use way more than that if you let it run at max performance and load. If you let it run above that for an extended amount of time, the cells that make up the battery can explode or start a fire. This is why Lenovo (and other manufacturers, probably) limit the power use on battery.

As others have suggested, ThrottleStop can solve your problem. I noticed that with SCII (trial run on battery for a forum member) if I turned down details to medium, I can get a playable frame rate and about 4 hours of battery life on a full charge without using ThrottleStop.

I have to ask, though, why would you want to play a game on battery?

 

there are a million reasons why one would want to play on a battery

like when you are on a plane, train, car, etc.

 

W520 has relatively weak video, so getting it to consume way more than 100W is not easy. Q1000/Q2000 have TGP of 45/55W, quadcore CPUs - TDP 45W, and the rest - at most 15-20W at max screen brightness. These are peak theoretical figures. Practically, to get it to 100W (according to external meter, altought PoweManager indicator is not far too), need to run some 3D benchmark in parallel to multithread CPU test etc.

In more real scenarios, 80-90W consumption is more likely. I guess with Q2920 , video overclocking etc, it may be possible to get to 120W+, but it would likely shutdown or melt because of thermal issues sooner than battery becomes an improvised explosive device

 

The newer planes have AC outlets. I was on 3 planes in the last 2 weeks, and I have to say, the W520 probably won't even fit that comfortably on the tray table. And I personally find it too bumpy during transportation of any kind to use a laptop for anything more than like movie watching.

Well, yes, I was exaggerating.

But if I recall correctly, a 45W Sandy Bridge can use up to 60W with Turboboost or something like that.

 

IMO when making a notebook, the manu. should include a battery that is able to output at the max usage that can be encountered

 

It is limited by physics. You need either a higher nominal voltage (more cells in series, raises probability of a string of cells dying, needs more cells to maintain current) or higher max non-burst current (more cells in parallel, needs more cells to maintain voltage). Recall that P = IV and in the end you need more cells for max power draw.

If you want to carry around a laptop with 18 cells, be my guest.

Though, Lenovo could've done a better job with the design and let both the slice and main batteries drain at the same time to provide a higher max power output.

 

while reading through the first part of your response I was thinking about this.

..too bad it doesnt work

no hack?

 

They should. And they do. You can run W520 on battery with full CPU and GPU load. For 50-60 minutes, or so.

Usually, though, it bottlenecks either at GPU, or CPU, or I/O, so one of those stays underused and you get ~1.5 hours of full performance.

If Lenovo didn't have this on battery throttling, they'd probably get an "issue" of terrible battery life, with internet and forums full of "I got my W520 out of the box, used it a bit, and the battery was dead in 2 hours, OMG, what a horrible design, what were they thinking!". As it is, it runs long on battery by default, yet you can get full performance if you really need to by overriding the default settings with ThrottleStop.

 

They did have this issue. It's the W510.